Feb. 12 (Bloomberg) -- Live Nation Entertainment Inc.’s
Ticketmaster will allow purchased tickets to be transferred
digitally as it accommodates more customers using mobile devices
to book shows and seeks to boost sales and advertising.

A customer buying tickets in North America to share with
friends will be able to send the bookings directly to the
recipients, providing a more convenient alternative than
printing out the ticket stubs to distribute, Los Angeles-based
Ticketmaster said in an e-mailed statement yesterday.

A service for users on desktop computers will be made
available before it is offered as a free feature in the first
half on a mobile application for both Apple Inc.’s iPhone and
devices running Google Inc.’s Android operating system. The
feature will work for tickets purchased physically and
electronically.

Ticketmaster, the world’s biggest ticket retailer, is
making transactions easier for the growing number of customers
with mobile devices. Michael Rapino, chief executive officer of
Live Nation, last month forecast mobile device bookings will
increase this year to 10 percent to 14 percent of total sales
from 7 percent in 2012.

“Now it’s all about mobility,” Rapino said in an
interview yesterday. “This elevates the ease of buying on
mobile and distributing to friends and takes that clunky process
of mailing a printout to friends out of the equation.”

To send tickets, customers log in to their Ticketmaster
account, select the tickets for the event to be shared, enter
the name and e-mail address of the recipients and click the
“transfer tickets” button. After a transfer, the original
ticket’s barcode is invalidated and a digital ticket is issued
with a new code, enabling a transfer whether it’s a paper,
print-at-home or digital format, the company said.

‘Casual Buyer’

“For the casual buyer thinking of going to a show,
debating whether to press the buy button, the shorter and faster
we can make that process on mobile will be good for business,”
Rapino also said.

Ticketmaster is about halfway through a $50 million
modernization that will reduce the company’s costs in North
America by 35 cents a ticket. The redesign also targets
increasing Ticketmaster’s 10 percent control of the $4 billion
ticket resale market, dominated by EBay Inc.’s StubHub, Rapino
has said.

Live Nation, based in Beverly Hills, California, rose 0.6
percent to $10.54 at the close in New York yesterday. The stock
has advanced 13 percent so far this year compared with a 6.4
percent gain for the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index.